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The Sea Goddess Sedna: An Enduring Pan-Arctic Legend from Traditional Orature to the New Narratives of the Late Twentieth Century MICHAEL P.J. KENNEDY female spirit who dwells at the bottom of the sea. For generations, Inuit orature has related how this woman came to be mistress of the sea creatures . The explanations of who she was vary, as do the interpretations of how she came to have dominion over the denizens of the ocean and provide seafood sustenance for the Inuit. Despite variations in its content, the Sea Goddess myth is pan-Arctic in scope, extending in one form or another from East Greenland1 along the coast of West Greenland2 into the North Greenland polar regions,3 west into Labrador,4 the Canadian North,0 and farther west into Alaska6 and Siberia .7 With the coming of Europeans and others from the south, this narrative from Inuit oral tradition was translated and transcribed. Central to the Sea Goddess legend is a being at the bottom of the ocean who decides whether to release the sea creatures for the Inuit to hunt for food. This woman has had many names ascribed to her including The Ghastly Woman or Infernal Goddess,8 Aywilliayoo or Protectress of the Sea Animals ,9 Arnarkuagsak or Old Woman,10 Sid-ne or Spirit Below," Sidney,12 Nerrivik or The Food Dish,13 Nuliajuk or Kavna (She Down There),14 Takanaluk Arnaluk or Mother of the Sea Beasts,'0 and Sedna.16 The Sea Goddess legend is a creation story which reveals the origin of the creatures of the ocean. The core tale of a woman having the digits of her hand being cut off as she clings to a boat in an attempt to save her own life is pan-Arctic in scope. According to Greenlandic legend,17 Smith Sound Inuit tradition,'8 Central Inuit orature,19 the Iglulik of Melville Peninsula ,20 and the Chukchee people of Siberia,21 it is the father who cuts off the fingers of his daughter. Some traditions,22 including that of the Cumberland Sound Inuit, tell of how the father also punctures his daughter's eye.23 ithin the rich Inuit tradition, there is a legend of a W 272 For the Polar Inuit of Greenland observed by Rasmussen in 1903-1904, it was the girl's grandfather who cut off her entire hand.24 Peter Freuchen and Knud Rasmussen describe how for other Inuit the legend is that of an orphan girl who is abandoned by her community.23 When the girl swims to the community's boat and grabs it in an attempt to go with them, her fingers are cut off by those in the boat.26 The basic plot of a woman clinging to the side of a boat and having the fingers of one hand cut off to become the creatures of the sea is central to most versions of the Sea Goddess legend. The durability of this segment of the legend is indeed significant in light of the variety of tales which lead up to it. In some versions, the woman clinging to the boat is a woman who has been married to a bird,27 usually a fulmar28 or a petrel.29 In other renderings, she is the woman who has wed a dog m and is the mother of some non-Inuit races.31 Despite the variance in narrative content among the tales, the Sea Goddess has endured time, distance, and the intrusion of new religion and culture and ways of life. The Woman at the Bottom of the Sea story continued to be a tradition among Inuit people during post-contact years. Indeed, it remains today a touchstone with an Inuit past where the very survival of the people was dependent upon the sea and, in turn, this Mistress of the Sea Creatures. Traditional Inuit orature was transcribed by anthropologists and other non-Inuit recorders of the spoken word into literary narratives which met the needs of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century Europeans and North Americans. However as the twentieth century progresses and the borders of traditional narrative expand, so too has the expression of the Sedna myth expanded to encompass new narratives which provide people from the latter half of this century with new approaches to the legend. The new narratives of the last decades of the Twentieth Century include several re-tellings of the Sedna legend in traditional prose and songs transcribed into English.A...

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